Ex convicts, Polish soldiers, Dutch sailors, English doctors, and Chinese labourers were among the many who flocked to the gold fields in pursuit of riches. Yet many found the myth of the gold rush more appealing than the reality. Sometimes hot and dusty, other times cold and damp, the diggings offered a life of hard labour, flies, mud, sly grog, dysentery, and occasionally, gold.

Australia now mines about 300 tonnes of gold annually – worth about $4.5million – making it the third-largest producer in the world, after South Africa and the United States. Gold is Australia’s second largest export after coal.

In 1965 archaeologists discovered the "Ramlah Hoard" – a collection of gold dinars and ingots dating from 761 to 976 – at Ramlah, near Jerusalem.

Gold fingerprinting technology, developed in Australia to help police trace the origin of stolen gold, is now being used to determine the origin of archaeological artefacts.